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Feelings split on migrant workers bill |
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May 6, 2000 WASHINGTON, MAY 5 (AP) - Allowing hundreds of thousands of illegal foreign migrant workers to remain in the United States legally would be better than allowing the abuse the workers endure now, lawmakers say.
"They are raped, they are robbed, they are bribed, they are pillaged in a way that (is) unthinkable, and ought to be unthinkable, in this country," Sen. Gordon Smith, a Republican from Oregon, told the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on immigration Wednesday. "It happens because they have no safe and legal way to come here and to go home."
Under the bill introduced by Smith and Sen. Bob Graham, a Democrat from Florida, undocumented workers who can prove they worked at least 150 days as agricultural laborers within the past year could immediately gain legal status as temporary nonimmigrants.
Those who do farm work for at least 180 days annually in five of the next seven years would be eligible to apply for legal permanent residence.
Legal status would allow the workers to complain about abuses without fear of being deported. "This is not only an economic issue, this is a humanitarian issue," said Sen. Larry Craig, a Republican from Idaho.
House members are working on their own bill.
"It makes no sense to let crops rot in the fields or never get planted when there is a waiting pool of labor," said Rep. Sanford Bishop, a Democrat from Georgia. There are more than 600,000 illegal migrant workers in the U.S., officials said.
Not everyone likes the idea, however.
The proposal would give farmers too much control over already exploited migrant workers and the temporary workers who are in the country legally, said Cecilia Mono, spokeswoman for the National Council of La Raza, which fights to reduce poverty and discrimination against Hispanic Americans.
Currently, farmers are allowed to have guest workers if not enough domestic workers are available. The guest workers are issued temporary visas to enter the United States. About 30,000 immigrants were admitted in 1998 under the program.
The bill would "lower wage rates, eliminate housing opportunities, reduce recruitment inside the United States, decrease government oversight and in other ways lower labor standards of U.S. farm workers and allow exploitation of vulnerable foreign workers," Mono said.
The proposed legislation would streamline the existing guest worker program, called H2-A, by creating a computerized national registry that would match workers with jobs. Foreign agricultural laborers would be hired only after the department determines there is a shortage of domestic workers.
Marcos Camacho of the United Farm Workers of America, AFL-CIO, called the bill "indentured servitude."
"It holds out a false hope of legalization to the many farm workers who are working in this country without proper authorization," Camacho said.
He complained that farm workers would not be able to prove that they've worked in the U.S. for 180 days or seven years without assistance from farmers, who could hold that like a club over the workers' heads.
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